Five Grotesque Heads (1750–1800): Art, History and Details

Five Grotesque Heads (1750–1800) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Gaetano Gandolfi (Italian, 1734–1802).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

From an early age, Gaetano Gandolfi was admired for his drawings, many of which were created as independent works of art and avidly collected by Italian and British patrons. This drawing is one of Gandolfi’s so-called teste pittoriche, or pictorial heads. Devised by the artist in the 1770s, this genre is based on contemporary academic theories that proposed that human emotions could be scientifically classified by facial expressions.

Object facts

• Title: Five Grotesque Heads
• Date: 1750–1800
• Creator attribution: Gaetano Gandolfi (Italian, 1734–1802)
• Culture: Italy
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: pen and brown ink and brush and brown wash over black chalk
• Dimensions: Sheet: 29.5 x 20.2 cm (11 5/8 x 7 15/16 in.)
• Collection: DR - Italian
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 1969.277

A detail from the museum

The term "grotesque" derives from the Italian word "grotteschi," which refers to the grottoes found in ancient Roman houses that were rediscovered around 1500.

Collection credit

Gift of Frederick M. Mayer

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.